Suffering from the collective cult of cognition

Leiden am kollektiven Kult ums Kognitive

Why is it that of all the mental diseases on record we are so preoccupied with those occurring at the beginning and at the end of life? The Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and dementia have both attracted the attention of the medical profession and the wider public only comparatively late in history. Many a physician has even dared to claim that these disorders were not discovered but as it were invented in the past century.

Pathologisations

Even if there is no doubt from my point of view that the mental phenomena known as ADHD and dementia describe a disease, the frequency with which both are diagnosed and discussed is striking. This is not least a question of perspective. It might be said that ADHD and dementia are diagnoses that chiefly serve to identify their sufferers as afflicted with an individual divergence from a cognitive norm. ADHD occurs in young people unable to sit still so as to concentrate on performing a mental task. Older people suffer from dementia when they are neither able to remember things adequately enough nor orient themselves sufficiently well in their everyday lives. Put briefly, both kinds of sufferers experience a painful difference between the demands placed on their mental faculties and actual reality. But this perspective threatens to overly pathologise individual variations on growing up and aging. If my child does not show signs of partial performance inefficiency or a minor form of autism, it must be either highly gifted or otherwise something must be fundamentally wrong. In old age, I become depressed if I am no longer able to learn another language or participate in a new digital technology.

Cognitive bias

It is time to question such social demands. They result from a collective cognitive bias, which is nothing but a mental distortion of its own kind. Could it be that our pedagogical agendas and curricula have long been overloaded, leaving too little time and space for children to engage fruitfully in emotional and physical learning experiences? And doesn’t the same hold true for the elderly? The overrated fear of developing dementia stems from the notion that we cease to exist when our mind weakens, instead of emphasising that those suffering from this disorder are still (but differently) capable. This is not solely a question about medical prevention and therapy but also about how society deals with these phenomena. Psychological medicine has long become an accomplice of a movement that overly pathologises and medicalises cognitive weaknesses at life’s beginning and end. This goes along with the materialistic tendency of such medicine, a materialism that manifests itself not only in neurobiological terms but also in psychopharmacological and economic ones. ADHD and dementia research mainly endorse brain research, especially in terms of neurofeedback and cognitive training, while neglecting psychotherapeutic approaches well-grounded in the humanities. The driving force behind science and public perception are not least pharmacological options, which assume scary inflationary proportions in the case of ADHD and which are still outstanding, but eagerly awaited, in the case of dementia. Finally, the cult of cognition has something to do with our fear of losing control. The notion that we cannot control our thinking for the entire duration of our lives obviously humiliates us beyond measure. At the end of the day, this humiliation also manifests itself in our efforts to come to grips with this fundamental predicament, for instance, with the help of reproductive medicine and euthanasia.

Latitudes

The development just outlined ultimately seems to follow the impulse to extend adult life, and the full possession of mental faculties throughout its course, as far backwards and forwards as possible. Apart from the question whether this desire follows an economic agenda, it appears to be a dead end. Neuropsychologically, the cognitive development of adolescents rests on mastering physical and emotional developmental tasks. As regards old age, it is reasonable if our memory for novelty weakens in favour of a concentration on the past and reflecting on the here-and-now of the time left. That our thinking capacity is limited is a physiological rather than a pathological fact. By no means do I mean to romanticise ADHS and dementia, whose severe forms are extremely painful for patients and their relatives. From my point of view, however, a considerable amount of suffering from these disorders stems from society’s tendency to overrate the importance of cognition and to overly fear its impairment. Firstly, this leads to diagnosing these illnesses too early and too often. Secondly, we thereby mobilise too many resources to align ourselves and our relatives with a cognitive norm, rather than creating individual scopes of development that take into account the different needs and demands of the young and the elderly.

Humiliation and control

When parents fight against their children’s ADHD diagnosis, and when adult children fight against their parents’ diagnosis of dementia, basic human perspectives sometimes are obscured from view. If a child’s environment is too focused on aligning that child with a cognitive norm, it will not feel unconditionally loved and welcome. And if attention centres exclusively on cognitive deficits when dealing with a demented person, then relatives will miss the chance to engage with the sufferer’s resources and thereby to maintain a relationship with that person. In human terms, we find ourselves wanting at the beginning and at the end of life. So presumably only those who cherish and preserve their sensory experience of nature and culture throughout adult life can be good companions for the young and the old. Probably, this is also the best preparation for one’s own dementia.

Copyright (c) 2014 by De Gruyter Oldenbourg and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact: julia.schreiner (at) degruyter.com.

Copyright (c) 2014 by De Gruyter Oldenbourg and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact: julia.schreiner (at) degruyter.com.